How SQLite Is Tested

https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html

8.2. Valgrind

Valgrind is perhaps the most amazing and useful developer tool in the world. Valgrind is a simulator - it simulates an x86 running a Linux binary. (Ports of Valgrind for platforms other than Linux are in development, but as of this writing, Valgrind only works reliably on Linux, which in the opinion of the SQLite developers means that Linux should be the preferred platform for all software development.) As Valgrind runs a Linux binary, it looks for all kinds of interesting errors such as array overruns, reading from uninitialized memory, stack overflows, memory leaks, and so forth. Valgrind finds problems that can easily slip through all of the other tests run against SQLite. And, when Valgrind does find an error, it can dump the developer directly into a symbolic debugger at the exact point where the error occur, to facilitate a quick fix.

Because it is a simulator, running a binary in Valgrind is slower than running it on native hardware. (To a first approximation, an application running in Valgrind on a workstation will perform about the same as it would running natively on a smartphone.) So it is impractical to run the full SQLite test suite through Valgrind. However, the veryquick tests and the coverage of the TH3 tests are run through Valgrind prior to every release.

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Valgrind is a free programming tool for memory debugging, memory leak detection, and profiling.

Valgrind was originally designed to be a free version of Purify for Linux on x86, but has since evolved to become a generic framework for creating dynamic analysis tools such as checkers and profilers. It has an excellent reputation and is widely used by Linux programmers.

The original author was Julian Seward. Several others have also made significant contributions; they include Cerion Armour-Brown, Jeremy Fitzhardinge, Tom Hughes, Nicholas Nethercote, Paul Mackerras, Dirk Mueller and Robert Walsh.

Valgrind may mean the main entrance to Valhalla in Norse mythology.

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DO-178B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification is a guideline dealing with the safety of safety-critical software used in certain airborne systems.